Best Bird of the Weekend (Last of May 2010)

May brings many of the best birds. Have you seen any good ones? One sure way to heighten the pleasure of a special bird sighting is to brag about it later. Step right up and share your best bird of the weekend.

My family and I hit New York City to see my new niece (yay Chloe Danielle!) which left little time or opportunity for avian observation. However, I was quite pleased to see that my aunt’s House Wrens have returned as sweet and songful as ever. Corey’s best bird was difficult to decide, as he has so many from which to choose. Was it a rare breeding wood-warbler like one of the many Cerulean Warblers or Golden-winged Warblers? Or one of the birds he rarely ever sees in NYC, like Broad-winged Hawk or Wild Turkey? One from the latter category works best so how about one of the two Barred Owls that he got excellent looks and pictures of?

What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.

Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.

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jmj

May 31, 2010 10:35:27 am

A new life bird: several Dickcissels singing in some restored prairie a couple blocks from my parents house.

Not much to see after volcanic ash covered a great part of Guatemala and then followed by 48 hours of rain due to Tropical Storm Agatha. This two natural phenomena caused a lot of destruction, both in infrastructure and nature as well.

That being said, we filled our three hummingbird-feeders. We normally get 4-6 birds at a time (we compete with abundant flowers and other natural feeding spots), but this time it was amazing to see up to perhaps 14-16 birds at a time braving ash, torrential rain and strong winds.

I have always said that hummingbirds are no team players, this time though, differences were set aside and all could eat from our feeders. We saw White-eared Hummingbird (Bassilina leucotis), Azure-crowned Hummingbird (Amazilia cyanocefala), Magnificent Hummingbird (Eugenes fulgens), Berylline Hummingbird (Amazilia berylina) and Blue-tailed Hummingbird (Amazilia cyanura).

Other birds began showing up once the rain subsided, but the hummingbirds are still going strong.

I was birding in the drizzle on Saturday. Most of the resident swallow species were present. I was just about to head home when behind me I heard an unfamiliar bubbling call. Behind me there were two all-dark swallows. Purple Martins. (There’s only one place locally where Purple Martins are regularly found, and I wasn’t there.) They flew down and perched on a road sign just across the road from me, so I had a great view of them.

I was fortunate to add five life birds and eleven state birds in Idaho this last weekend at Camas NWR and Market Lake WMA. Highlights were: Olive-sided Flycatcher, American Redstart (3 males), Swainson’s Thrush, Nothern Waterthrush, Common Grackle (not so common in Idaho), and Black-and-White Warbler.

Best bird 1– well, after visiting Montezuma, I paused in Syracuse to stay at the cool youth hostel there (old victorian) which was in a quiet, residential area. It was late, but still light – and a pair of kestrels flew by.

Best bird 2 — Worked my way up to Fort Drum via some of the sites mentioned on the Syracuse area rare bird alert. Took some searching/googling, but found Whiskey Hollow (it’s in Baldwinville). As I was unloading myself out of the car, I hear this swoosh of wings. I look up, and a plieated has landed on a tree across the road. A moment later he swept off. First of the year.

I saw a sparrow with a black throat. The only one I can find in bird books that might be here (central FL) is a Harris sparrow. I am hoping to see it again so I can check it out closer. It had a very distintive black throat, pale breast, dark back with stripes. Bill and feet I have no idea of the color.
Any suggestions of who he is?

Saw some great birds including Northern Gannet, Magnificent Frigatebird, a singing Pine Warbler, and a end of the day Barred Owl. Picked up 4 new year birds and a few county birds, 67 species total. Not bad for South Florida this time of year.

This past weekend was a good one for birding. It was my first trip to the El Copal reserve in Costa Rica and won’t be my last. Of the 140 species identified in two days, best birds were probably Tawny-chested Flycatcher, Gray-headed Piprites, and Snowcap. The flycatcher is rare, little known, and more frequent at El Copal than any other place I have seen. The Piprites (a strange, chunky, manakin-looking thing) was heard only but since this rare, little known species is hardly ever recorded, this was a great find! Snowcap is neither rare, nor little known but can be hard to find and just looks incredible- like a living piece of burgundy candy topped with white frosting (more or less!).

Thanks Rick. Wonder why bird books don’t have them with the sparrows !
The bird I saw seemed to be alot darker, but I was looking at it toward the sun, so who knows. I am hoping to see it again so I can check out closer the little differences.

Dear Audrey, “Sparrow” is one of those polysemic bird words; basically you can call anything brown and streaky a ‘sparrow’ regardless of its actual relationships. House Sparrows are in a different family from the New World sparrows (and the Old World buntings), and so are separated from them in books that follow a taxonomic sequence. The best way to distinguish House Sparrow from the native sparrows at a glance, in any age and sex class, is the back pattern: where native sparrows have fine black streaks, House Sparrows have great big wide orangish ski tracks running down the back.